A friend of my wife works for the Australian consulate in the city. They had the largest group of citizens lost in the crash. Their foreign minister was in the Ukraine to receive the bodies the other day.

Sanjid Singh Sandhu, 41Flight steward - MalaysiaMr. Sandhu, an ethnic Indian, hadn't been scheduled to work Flight 17 until he switched shifts with another flight steward, according to Malaysian news media. Mr. Sandhu went by the nickname "Bobby," given to him in the 1970s by a nanny who liked the hit Bollywood movie of the same name, his father, Jijar Singh said. He was supposed to visit his parents after the flight landed and his mother had prepared all of his favorite dishes, the father said. A last-minute swap in March had saved Mr. Sandhu's wife, who is a Malaysia Airlines stewardess, from duty on the Flight 370 that disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Mr. Singh said his grandson, Mr. Sandhu's 10-year-old son Hans, told him, "Dadaji, don't be sad. Your son is gone, but this son is here. I will take care of you all."

James!:A friend of my wife works for the Australian consulate in the city. They had the largest group of citizens lost in the crash. Their foreign minister was in the Ukraine to receive the bodies the other day.

It's been rough.

Not sure if it was him or not, but I saw one Australian being interviewed after the first bodies were arriving who said something to the effect of as the caskets kept arriving, one after another I'd wonder "Is this one Australian?" then I realized they're all Australian. They're all Dutch. They're all all of the other nations involved. He said it far more eloquently than I can remember

I do think that the Netherlands has done a fantastic job of treating the remains with the respect and dignity they deserve. I noticed at the ceremony they had a flag from each nation who lost someone, I thought that was a nice touch, very thoughtful.

They die from cigarettes and drunk driving. Plain-old old age. Cancer. Suicide. They die suddenly or after lingering for decades. They die at home. In operating rooms. In anonymous hotel rooms, and even at work. Some die in the defense of others, other die at the hands of the State.

I feel bad for all of them. I understand why we need to make special note of these people, but it's not going to change anything, and all their deaths will bring is even more death.

First they give thugs an advanced missile system, but no command/control to verify what they're shooting.Now, Pooty-Poot is so remorseful, he's firing artillery from Russian soil to Ukraine, daring the Ukraines to fly into Russia.

I always find it amazing how an asshole, whom no one ever gave a shiat about, never dies in a tragedy. If you're ever on a plane with an insufferable jerk, take a nap and rest assured you'll arrive safely.

The Maslin kids were onboard with their grandfather, Nick Norris. Parents decided to stay on a little longer in Holland and survived. The link has a letter written by them expressing their pain. It's heartbreaking.

The Repeated Meme:AirForceVet: Appreciate the NYT making the loss of all those people over such cold-blooded stupidity that much more real to us all.

/F**king Russian bastards.

It is tragic when white people die.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, dead children at the UN building, but no one cares, because, y'know, brown people.

/meanwhile in Israel, rockets are falling on civilians who want nothing but to be left alone. these rockets are fired by ultra right wing derp spewing islamic funides, who fire their missiles from residential neighborhoods in Gaza, and make sure to film the return strike from Israel and say "Look at how terrible Israel is...they are bombing CHILDREN".

The Maslin kids were onboard with their grandfather, Nick Norris. Parents decided to stay on a little longer in Holland and survived. The link has a letter written by them expressing their pain. It's heartbreaking.

The whole thing is very sad, and speaks of man's inhumanity to men. And not only the cold blooded murder of all those innocent people, but the "after the fact" looting of their luggage for fun and profit. It takes a special kind of asshole to do something so cold.

The Maslin kids were onboard with their grandfather, Nick Norris. Parents decided to stay on a little longer in Holland and survived. The link has a letter written by them expressing their pain. It's heartbreaking.

To anyone trying to score points for their worldview by claiming we are deliberately ignoring all the other injustices in the world: shut the fark up. It is possible to pause to consider one loss without forgetting the others. If you have a problem with this article and thread you are free to put one of your own in the queue.

The Maslin kids were onboard with their grandfather, Nick Norris. Parents decided to stay on a little longer in Holland and survived. The link has a letter written by them expressing their pain. It's heartbreaking.

This one made me cry. I think that if all my children have to die that I would want to just die with them.

They missed one of the saddest cases. A Vietnamese-Dutch woman and her two children died as well. Although it isn't mentioned, they were on their to Vietnam to participate in a buddhist ceremony for the 1st anniversary of the father's passing away who died in a train-accident exactly one year ago.

One of the things coming from this crash is the realisation how small and closely connected our country. Almost everybody I know, was somehow connected to someone on the crash. I knew the restaurant owner mentioned in the article personally, my girlfriend knew the Vietnamese family and one victim taught at the same university as I do. I didn't know him but I will sure must have passed him sometime in the hall.

Great_Milenko:Wonderful people die every day, and so do absolute sons of biatches.

They die from cigarettes and drunk driving. Plain-old old age. Cancer. Suicide. They die suddenly or after lingering for decades. They die at home. In operating rooms. In anonymous hotel rooms, and even at work. Some die in the defense of others, other die at the hands of the State.

I feel bad for all of them. I understand why we need to make special note of these people, but it's not going to change anything, and all their deaths will bring is even more death.

And that's the problem, isn't it?

No one--and I mean no one in the entire farking world--will stand up to Russia and Putin. No one.

Vlad thinks he can get away with it because he can. Because the "leaders" of the world let him. There is a cure for that, but it's illegal. Not necessarily immoral in this case, but that can be a fine line sometimes.

No one--and I mean no one in the entire farking world--will stand up to Russia and Putin. No one.

Vlad thinks he can get away with it because he can. Because the "leaders" of the world let him. There is a cure for that, but it's illegal. Not necessarily immoral in this case, but that can be a fine line sometimes.

That's simply not true. Everyone is standing up to Putin as much as they can reasonably get away with. There's only so much you can do to "stand up to" a country/leader who has a vast supply of nuclear weapons. There are basically three options to "stand up to" Russia:

1) Economic sanctions. The US is doing this because we get next to nothing from Russia and can easily afford to do it. The European Union was not sanctioning Russia because they get most of their fuel from there, but many nations have now reversed that and are applying sanctions. Most of Europe couldn't care less about Ukraine, and for certain they don't want to risk their already unstable economies or their citizen's lives over it. The only reason they are willing to apply sanctions is because the MH17 incident has pissed off enough people to make it politically viable.

2) Non-nuclear military action. The US has been the most vocal in this area (McCain et al.), but it isn't feasible for us because we've massively drawn down our presence in Europe and would have to ship troops over, which would take a few weeks at least. Even if they were there, we'd still need permission/agreement from nearly all of Europe to transport them, ammunition, and supplies to Russia and Ukraine. The EU doesn't want to do this because nobody (and I mean nobody) wants war at all, let alone with Russia. The reason they don't is because Russia can easily counter their military with nuclear reprisal. If they do that, NATO is obligated to respond, and we have a nuclear war. You'd have to be insane to want to do this.

The only way non-nuclear military action starts is if Russia takes over all of Ukraine and then keeps going west. I find this highly unlikely, because again, as soon as they did, we'd be into a nuclear confrontation. Nobody, not even Putin, wants this.